Storm Cell

by Brendan DuBois

  “I know, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable.”

  “Why?”

  “What, and give up all of my secrets now?”

  “Lewis . . .”

  “What’s the matter, Agent Krueger, aren’t we friends anymore?” A few raindrops started splattering the ground. “I still think Felix is innocent, and I’ve got a few threads I want to tug at. Is that good enough?”

  “Just remember that—”

  I interrupted him. “Don’t insult me, all right? I know what’s at stake, what it means to get him out of where he is. But it’s a two-way street now, isn’t it? Because you want that just as bad. Only you’re too terrified to do anything about it.”

  “Agreed, but please don’t insult me either. We both want the same thing.”

  “That we do,” I said. “But how you and I end up when this over, we might be in conflict. Just so there’s no misunderstandings.”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Fantastic,” I said. “Now, about Raymond Drake. I told you I thought he was being held against his will at his home in Boxford.”

  “That you did.”

  Pause. Cars moved in and out of the crowded restaurant parking lot. I gave out a big sigh I hoped the special agent could hear. “Come on, now, Agent Krueger. What’s new on that end? I don’t expect the HRT to drop in from above and go through the windows, but I’d hope you would have done something with that information.”

  “We’ve checked the house out,” he said. “There appear to be three people in residence.”

  “How did you check it out?”

  “It was checked out,” he said, “and that’s all you’re going to get from me.”

  “Can you tell if one of those persons was Raymond Drake?”

  “No.”

  I said, “Then what was it? Overhead drone check on heat signatures? Drive-by thermal device? Other means of surveillance that we poor dumb civilians know nothing about?”

  He chose his words carefully. “There are three adults in that household. We believe one is female, and the other two are male.”

  “Can you at least tell me where they’re located?”

  “I don’t have that information,” he said. “Sorry. Look, I need to go. Do call me with any developments, and, Lewis, do pick up the pace, will you?”

  Lots of insults came to mind, but since we had just made a Best Friends Forever pledge to leave alone the insults, I let it go. “Got the word,” I said. “Pace will be quickened.”

  I met Paula back in the restaurant, just as she was putting her coat back on. “That’s a nice piece of work,” she said, “you getting a phone call just before the check came.”

  “Pure accident,” I said. “Look, I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Really? And what do you plan to do, pick up the check next time we eat at one of America’s most famous upscale fast-food establishments?”

  “No,” I said, and what next came out I think surprised us both: “How about a homemade meal at my newly rebuilt home?”

  She paused, putting on her coat, and then she smiled and pulled it over her shoulders. “A true Lewis Cole homemade meal. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that.”

  “Does that mean yes?” I asked.

  “It means get me back to the court on time, or nothing good will happen.”

  I sat with her for a few minutes while Judge Crapser, Assistant Attorney General Moran, and Hollis Spinelli huddled up at the judge’s bench for a while, and then the judge raised her head and said, “All right, Counselors, let’s move this into chambers. And, bailiffs, give the jury a break as well.”

  There was the usual and standard up-and-down, up-and-down, as the judge departed, trailed by the two attorneys, then Felix was hustled away, and then the jury departed. We spectators slid out as well, and I saw Kimberly Moore heading downstairs, flanked by her two daughters.

  I decided to follow them, hating myself with each step.

  We all ended up in the basement of the courthouse, which had glassed-in offices, vending machines, and a handful of round tables and chairs. Kimberly sat at one of the tables with one of her daughters, and the other daughter went to the vending machine. With notebook in hand—the invisible shield that allows so many writers and reporters to approach folks and break through any barriers—I walked up to her and said, “Mrs. Moore, could I talk to you for a second?”

  Her eyes were red rimmed but dry, and her thick blond hair was well styled, but her makeup looked out of place, like her hand had been shaking while applying it. “Yes, what’s it about?”

  So I told her that great lie I’ve used before, as a pretend writer or journalist, gaining someone’s trust in return for information that they’re giving up in what they think will end up in a story somewhere.

  When I was finished she seemed puzzled, as did her daughter—who looked like a twenty-year-younger version of her mom—and she said, “All right, ask your questions. This is my daughter Brianna.”

  I sat down and said, “Again, I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. And I’ll make this quick. I’m sure the police have asked you this before, but can you think of anyone who would want to harm your husband?”

  A quick and practiced shake of the head. “No . . . of course not. Everyone loved Fletch. Everyone.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. Her daughter reached out and took her hand. I said, “I know he was one of the proponents behind the zoning amendment to allow gambling to start up at Tyler Beach. Did he get many threats from that?”

  Brianna interrupted. “No, absolutely not. Oh, there were e-mails and phone calls from folks who weren’t in favor of the amendment, but nothing threatening. Nothing that would make you think . . . I mean . . .”

  Tears started rolling down her cheeks. Her mom squeezed her hand. “He wasn’t perfect, but I can’t believe he’s gone,” Brianna said.

  I said, “Do you . . .”

  “No, I don’t. But he had so many meetings at night. He was always apologetic, and he always made up for those nights later. Going up to Ogunquit for the weekend, or the Cape.”

  The other daughter came back, standing behind her mom, holding a can of Diet Coke and some peanut butter crackers. “Mom,” she asked, “is everything okay?”

  Kimberly took a paper napkin from the older daughter and dabbed at her eyes. “It’s okay. This man—Mr. Cole?—he’s writing an article. This is my oldest daughter, Justine.”

  Older daughter was instantly suspicious. “For what? The Porter Herald? The Tyler Chronicle?”

  “No,” I said. “Freelance. For the Law Enforcement Bulletin.”

  She sat down in a free chair, seemed to make a point of scraping it in, so the noise was loud and interrupting. “Never heard of it.”

  “Well, I just wanted to check with your mom and—”

  She said, “Please, haven’t you vultures had enough? What more do you want to know? That asshole upstairs murdered my dad, and for what? Why?”

  “That’s part of what I’m trying to find out,” I said, trying not to squirm in embarrassment. “I’m looking into—”

  Justine opened up the peanut butter cracker package. “Really? What do you know about my dad? Do you know how old he was? Do you know where he went to college? Do you know the name of his real estate agency?”

  Busted.

  “No, I’m sorry, but like I said, I’m just starting out and—”

  Justine wouldn’t have any of it. “Go away. This is just a story to you, right? A way to get some information? You want information? You want me to tell you what it was like to go with my mom to the Porter Hospital and ID my dead dad? You want details on calling up a funeral home cold, asking if they would take care of his remains? You want to know how long it took to go through his closet and pick a suit for his funeral, knowing we’d be hiding all those fucking autopsy scars? Is that what you want?”

  Kimberly and Brianna both teared up. I got up from the table.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That�
��s not what I want.”

  And I walked away from the three women.

  Even though the courtroom was large and airy and expansive, I had to get out of there. I could not stand the thought of going back upstairs and sitting in the spectator area with Kimberly and her two daughters. I felt like I had taken their very few minutes of respite in the break area of the courtroom and had just shoved their faces back into the brutal memories and realities of a dad and husband being shot.

  Not a particularly good feeling.

  It was raining when I got outside, and it rained all the way home to Tyler Beach.

  My stop at the Tyler Post Office was its usual nonproductive self, with a handful of flyers from local supermarkets and bulk-discount stores, the latest issue of The Planetary Report, and nothing where a nice fat settlement check from my insurance company should have been. From the post office to home took about ten or so dreary minutes, and once I got inside, I tossed the mail on the counter and flopped on the couch. I was feeling out of sorts, like I was coming down with something, when in truth, the only thing I was coming down with was a case of the glums. Felix was a half hour away, and I had no idea what was going on with him, or why he had been in Porter that night in January, or why in God’s name he hadn’t gotten Raymond Drake to defend him.

  Poor Raymond Drake. It was probable that he was being held captive in luxury at his home in Boxford, but my visit there hadn’t gone well, and I was in no mood to go back and try again without an infantry combat team backing me up.

  And Hollis Spinelli. Despite Carol Moynihan’s denials, it looked like he had gone to see Russ Gilman, the owner of the apartment building on Sher Avenue. Looking for more information on something, anything he could use in his defense of Felix, especially after those surveillance videos had been admitted into evidence?

  Sure, I thought. Maybe he could get Russ Gilman to admit that the apartment building wasn’t really on Sher Avenue, but on another street, and due to a hundred-year-old mix-up in naming streets in Porter, the mistake had never been noticed, and now the state’s entire case could be dismissed because they got the scene of the crime wrong.

  Yeah. I didn’t think so.

  What to do, then?

  Something stupid, something out of the box, something that would probably get me into trouble.

  I got up from the couch. Why not? I didn’t have anything else planned for the evening.

  The Wentworth County House of Corrections was in a fairly remote and rural section of Bretton. It was brick and concrete and antennas, and coils of razor wire above the fence line. I parked in a lower parking lot and checked the time. It was just past six P.M. Earlier wanderings around the jail’s homepage revealed that visiting hours were set at different times, depending on which cellblock a prisoner was residing in, and tonight, from six P.M. to nine P.M., it was Cellblock C, where Felix was residing.

  From the lower parking lot I walked up a wide set of concrete stairs that brought me up to a narrower lot, and to the left, the entrance to the jail. There was a bare lobby area, with a small cluster of people waiting about. I stayed outside and watched them through the thick glass.

  Not surprisingly, the dozen or so people inside trended female, from young teenage girls, to moms holding the hands of girls or boys, to older women standing by themselves. It hurt just to look at them. Not to get all socioeconomic or philosophical, but when a male did something stupid—assault, breaking and entering, theft—more victims were created than just the one. I could not imagine a childhood where I would be brought to a place like this to speak to my dad through a thick Plexiglas barrier.

  Eventually the family members were buzzed in, one at a time or in a small group, and then the lobby area was empty.

  My turn, now.

  I entered the thick door, and to the left was a steel and thick glass enclosure, with a small opening at the bottom to let identification cards or other paperwork slip through. A female corrections officer gave me a firm look as I approached.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here to see an inmate,” I said. “Felix Tinios, of North Tyler.”

  “Name?”

  “Lewis Cole.”

  “Address?”

  “Tyler.”

  She glanced down at a clipboard. “Sorry, Mr. Cole, you’re not on the list.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I still want to talk to him.”

  A crisp shake of the head. “I’m sorry, that’s the rules here. Unless you’re on the list, visitors just can’t show up.”

  “I need to talk to him,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” she said. “You’re not on the visitors list, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  From my jacket I took out my letter from the FBI, my wallet, and my press pass issued by the New Hampshire Department of Safety.

  “I’m a journalist, working on a story for the Law Enforcement Bulletin, at the direction of the FBI,” I said, sliding the letter and press pass to her. “It’s critical that I speak to Felix Tinios.”

  She gingerly picked up my two offerings and held them like she was suspicious they were contaminated with anthrax. She looked at me and then the ID, and then opened the letter, read it, folded it back up, and returned it to the envelope.

  Both items were briskly returned to me. “What I can suggest is that you call tomorrow and make an appointment with the superintendent,” she said. “That’s the best I can do.”

  I picked up my items and said, “I’m sorry, that’s not going to work for me. Ma’am, you’re being polite and professional and I appreciate it, but whatever happens in the next several minutes will have an impact on what kind of article I write for the Bulletin, and how your corrections department will be represented.”

  Oh, the dagger looks I got from her eyes, and I leaned closer to the enclosure and said, “How about this. Give me a few minutes with your shift supervisor and then I’ll go away happy. All right?”

  She kept on giving me dagger looks. I said, “Look, the shift supervisor, whoever he or she is, that’s why they get paid the big bucks, right? To take care of problems like me.”

  I was thankful for the thick glass between us, for it seemed she had special powers in the dislike in her eyes. But I was pleased that she stepped away, picked up a telephone, and started talking.

  It didn’t take long.

  She hung up the phone and turned to me, and there was a loud buzzing noise coming from the thick door ahead of me. “Go on through, and wait by the chairs. Lieutenant Gilligan will be here momentarily.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and she said nothing in reply, which I entirely understood.

  Just past the entrance was the visitors area, which was crowded. The visitors sat on heavy cement stools, and before them were waist-high counters with thick glass, and each area was separated by thick wooden dividers. Phones were being used on each side of the glass, with the inmates all dressed in dark orange jumpsuits. Some of the women were holding the phones down to their children.

  It was an incredibly depressing and soul-deadening sight. For years since I had moved to Tyler Beach and befriended Diane Woods, I had gone on scores of ride-alongs as she drove around the not-so-mean streets of Tyler and Tyler Beach. I was with her and the uniformed police officers when they arrested people—overwhelmingly male—on a variety of warrants or offenses. I sometimes saw these men get processed in the booking room at the Tyler police station, but I had never seen one of the end results, their incarceration here at the county jail.

  Their place behind the glass, metal, and concrete walls didn’t bother me that much. It was the friends and families, imprisoned beyond their own walls, that made me look away.

  That didn’t help. There were brochures on “Visiting Mom and Dad,” “Jail and Prison Procedures,” and “Questions for Caregivers.” There was also a shelf with free Bibles.

  A well-muscled and heavyset man came down the corridor, dressed in the green pants and white shirt of
the county jail staff. His nametag said GILLIGAN, and the look in his hooded eyes said he had heard too many jokes about his last name and wasn’t open to hear another one. His neck was squat, his black hair was closely trimmed, and he had very small ears close to the sides of his skull.

  “Mr. Cole?” he asked. He didn’t bother offering a hand, and I wasn’t insulted.

  I checked the insignia on his shirt collars and said, “Lieutenant Gilligan, thanks for seeing me.”

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  So I repeated what I had told the patient woman at the front, and he folded his arms and said, “I’m really sorry, Mr. Cole, it’s impossible to see Mr. Tinios. He’s an inmate here, and he has certain rights. Among those rights is not to see anyone he doesn’t want to see.”

  “I understand, but I’m concerned . . .”

  I couldn’t quite say the words. “For what? His safety?” He laughed. “Does this look like Rikers? Or Sing Sing? Most of the inmates here are in for misdemeanors or low-class felonies, or are here awaiting trial. The most violent, the real hardcore, they’re over at the state prison in Concord. Not here.”

  “I’m still concerned about him, and I’d like to interview him.”

  “Won’t happen.”

  “Then I’ll have to talk to—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said. “Even the superintendent won’t let you see him without his say-so. They may be imprisoned here, but they can also refuse to see anyone who stops by.”

  “Lieutenant, could you at least pass word to him that I came by to see him? Please?”

  He said, “Mr. Cole, we’ve been more than patient. You’ve asked to see Mr. Tinios, and I’ve told you that can’t happen. Even as part of an interview conducted by a journalist. So now it’s time for you to leave.”

  “Lieutenant—”

  Gilligan stepped closer, and it struck me what a strong, forceful, and overwhelming presence he was, standing just feet away from me. A man who was locked within prison walls, dealing with men who didn’t want to be here, a man who had to be on guard at every waking moment here.